Who (or What) Topped Forbes’ 15 Richest Fictional Characters?

The real world might be suffering from economic hardship, but the imaginary world (literally) has money growing on trees. Yes, Forbes’ annual list of the wealthiest fictional one-percenters is out.

Characters from all facets of popular culture have deeper pockets than some of the actual world’s richest people. In fact, it seems every year, they just get richer and richer. Maybe that’s because we’re getting poorer and poorer and they just seem richer by comparison.

Either way, Forbes released their annual list of the 15 richest fictional celebrities and an interesting winner topped this year’s list: Smaug from J.R.R. Tolkein’s ‘The Hobbit.’ Smaug, a dragon known across Middle Earth as “Smaug the Tremendous” and “Smaug the Unassessably Wealthy,” has a net worth of $62 billion representing a 16% increase from 2011, mostly from his stockpile of gold coins, jewels and antiques.

The rest of the list included some regular fixtures of Forbes’ annual feature including ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ oil tycoon Jed Clampett and self-styled corporate playboy Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. It also included some new names who saw some amazing increases in wealth like private investigator/hacker Lisbeth Salander from ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ and ‘Game of Thrones” own Lord of Casterly Rock Tywin Lannister. Sadly, some familiar faces such as Scrooge McDuck, Gordon Gekko and Jeffrey Lebowski (the rich old dude in the wheelchair) were bumped off the list this year.

Forbes compiled the net worth of each character by comparing their assets to “known real-world commodity and share price movements.” Characters with private funds were compared to similar public companies and monetary stockpiles in the real world.

Forbes’ ‘Fictional 15′ and their individual net-worths are below. Congrats to all the winners! Now can we borrow $10, Smaug?